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Thursday, September 6, 2012

My sister has been sick so I've had both dogs for Agility.
Three weeks ago (8/21) My instructor ran Pan. She did REALLY good, despite taking a sudden obsession with the teeter (ala Trophy style-TEETER!MUST.CLIMB!) which is so WEIRD because up to this week she has been doing the teeter, but obviously nervous about the sudden loss of gravity. We were doing a sequence that had a jump and she needed to bypass the teeter to go to a tunnel that started at the other side of the teeter, she climbed the teeter probably 12 times before she did it right. And she was HAPPY about the teeter. lol.

My instructor's only two comments were: "man, she really does have Unicorns in her head, doesn't she!?" and "SOMEONE TEACH THIS DOG SOME FREAKING WEAVES." To which i respond, I'm going to order her a Mad Dog Metalworks tag that says "I do what the butterfly-eating, rainbow-shitting unicorns in my head tell me to do" and second, not my dog, not my weave problem.

This week (9/2) I ran both dogs. Yeah, agility kicked my butt. BUT Pan's normal problem of losing focus and avoiding work by sniffing around the course only happened once - the rest of the time she was totally engaged in agility, she was just running her own damn course! She was all: JUMP! THIS JUMP OVER HERE! TEETER! OMFG A-FRAME!!!!!! It was hilarious, really. I actually got her to do some sorta-weaves with a cheese stick in my hand, but she has no idea what she's doing, she's just flailing through the poles trying to get to the cheese in my hand.

We worked a sequence again that had a jump curled around under the a-frame, so the dog sees TUNNEL-A-FRAME-TUNNEL (yeah, just like that). Pan did really well, surprisingly, with obstacle discrimination. Trophy, otoh, was like TUNNEL! At one point, he took off for the left tunnel (when i am cuing him CLIMBIT) I uh-uhed him so he backed out, told him to climb it, he went to the right side of the tunnel (next to where i'm standing) I uh-uhed again, and cued climbit, and we had a bit of a stare down, and then the little shit ran through the tunnel anyway. jerk.

Other than that, he was having some release problems again, both at the start line and off the table. Like he doesn't believe that i really do want him to get moving. No problem with other contact obstacle releases. so weird.